To Kill To Kill A Mockingbird

Introduction

Adults often attribute to children an intellect which is beyond the abilities of any child. As such, in their education, they ascribe books which hold within their covers complex philosophies. The questions raised by prominent authors and the answers proposed by others are done in symbolic stories like Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, and even The Giver are wasted on the simplistic minds of children. These easily distracted readers do not comprehend the dangers of base moralism discussed in Animal Farm or the rampant commercialism present in Fahrenheit 451. The overarching themes of A Gathering of Old Men and A Farewell to Arms are lost on hormonal teenagers. And though these books may be recalled in adulthood as foundational to social outlooks and political opinions, their message is usually ignored. The author’s words are distorted to fit already conceived opinions. For the example in this piece, let us examine almost every Progressive’s childhood favorite: To Kill A Mockingbird.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher whose take on childhood education was that children should be given experiences, not esoteric lessons. He uses the example of Aesop’s Fables, which detail various important morals which are at once evident to the adult reader. In particular, he denotes the story of the fox and crow, which points how vanity is a vice easily exploited by flattery. However, a child, according to Rousseau, only hears a story about a clever fox and a silly crow. He does not learn the lesson of how vanity is a flaw. In this way, many young readers of Harper Lee’s award winning novel totally miss the point about justice, about reasonable doubt.

Instead, they read a story about growing up in troubled times. They read about the racism so prominent in the early Twentieth Century and learn to condemn it. That is all. The evidence ignored by an all-white jury is a lesson that these young readers ignore. Instead, they spend a month and a half reading a novel only to come out and say something they have already learned from the first time they made a friend with a different color of skin. They only relearn that racism is bad.

The compulsory reading of To Kill A Mockingbird has only serves to obscure the author’s important point. One form of bias and bigotry and loudly and vocally condemned by young readers, reveling in positive attention they receive for their virtue. But many Tom Robinsons have been tried, both in the court of public opinion and in the courts of law. Having learned only that expressing a common moral opinion wins one applause, Harper Lee’s young readers often become the all-white jury who found an innocent man guilty of rape.

I intend here to demonstrate how To Kill A Mockingbird has done nothing to influence Society. Though it’s premise and purpose are philosophically in line with the Enlightenment. There should be a statute of innocent until proven guilty. However, it’s popularity with educators has led to this message being wasted on children who cannot comprehend such concepts.

An Overview of To Kill A Mockingbird

Harper Lee’s novel follows the main character, a little girl called Scout as she experiences everyday life in the Jim Crow era of the Southern United States. She is the daughter of a prominent defense attorney, named Atticus Finch, who is tasked with defending a black man accused of violently raping a white woman.

The above synopsis does not include some of the supporting characters or seemingly unrelated events to the main plot which are tied only in theme (one which will be discussed a little bit later in this piece). I have also not touched upon some of the other subplots and layers which Harper Lee crafted in order to give a full story depicting a particularly unique childhood experience.

Scout’s point of view is quite important; and this is the reason she was chosen both as the main character and the narrator. Instead of giving the readers another courtroom drama, or a story depicting the social strains of a small town in the face of National change, Harper Lee gives her readers a view of an injustice from the eyes of a child. Scout’s cultural position and her juxtaposed innocence gives us a fresh take on the Jim Crow era of the Southern United States.

We see the unfair trial of an innocent man. We see a man who is deemed guilty not because of clear evidence or unbiased witnesses, but because of the accusation of a woman with and abusive father and the color of his skin.

The influence of Albert Camus’ L’Entranger on Harper Lee are very evident. However, instead of giving us a view of the hopeless man faced with the absurd from the view of Tom Robinson, or even his close confidant Atticus Finch, we are treated to a child who encounters the absurdity of hope. Her innocence smashed, Scout watches a man she knows to be kind, a man with a wife and children, a man her father knows and she knows to be innocent of that for which he stands accused, sentenced and ultimately killed. And unlike Camus’ Stranger, who did commit the murder only to be faced with absurd evidence like not crying at his mother’s funeral, Scout sees an innocent man faced with the absurd evidence of his skin color. She learns that one’s guilt is determined not by one’s actions, but by the opinions of Society.

There runs an important subplot throughout To Kill A Mockingbird. There is a creepy house with a strange family around whom many stories have been crafted. Scout and her friends are petrified of a man living there. This man is named Boo, an apt name considering how much fear he inspires in the local populace. Scout is afraid of Boo just as much as her peers.

The death of Tom Robinson has a profound impact on the young girl. She realizes that the prejudices by which the defendant was found guilty are not dissimilar to the judgments which make Boo scary. Simplistic minds, easily swayed by the mere opinions of others and the desire to be applauded for virtue, allow others to assign the characteristics of good and evil. Scout comes to try to understand Boo, and learns the truth.

He was a man abused as a child. The poor socialization this caused led to him coming across as odd to the town as a whole. He is abandoned because he is off-putting. There is no empathy for him among people who are otherwise found to be friendly. He is spooky because of the sins of his father. Just as his race makes Tom Robinson guilty, Boo Radley is outcast because of the effects of a terrible father. I will not place any more spoilers here.

The simplistic writing of To Kill A Mockingbird make it easy for adolescents to follow the story. The philosophical concepts of society and justice and prejudice remain as obscure as hieroglyphics to their still developing minds. The children only learn that racism is bad, a lesson which they realize when spending time with friends of other colors. They do not learn the important lesson which Harper Lee had for her readers. All it took to find Tom Robinson innocent, or at least to buy him time, would be one person to accept that his ruined arm made it impossible for him to commit the crime. All it would have taken to save Boo Radley would be acceptance by his neighbors.

These concepts about the importance of socialization, the need for reason over emotional impulse, and about how these things impact social pillars like justice, are lost on children. At the end of the day, To Kill A Mockingbird is just one more book one reads in school. It is either recalled as a childhood delight or as another burden one had to face. To demonstrate that mandating its reading has defeated Harper Lee’s purpose, let us examine a very modern Tom Robinson. Let us consider the crucifixion of Bill Cosby.

The Crucifixion of Bill Cosby by the Morally Righteous

The absurd makes reveals itself to Scout when Tom Robinson is found guilty solely on the accusation of a woman. In the face of contradictory evidence and reason, the all-white jury found an innocent man guilty. In the past few years, the absurd has revealed itself to every one of us. People took part in what amounted to a witch burning when comedian Bill Cosby was accused of rape. The rape itself was only alleged and, if it did occur at all, it happened more than twenty years before.

What is known about those events in the early Nineties is that Cosby met with aspiring female stars at various bars. After sharing some drinks he invited them back to his place. According his accusers, he spiked drinks which he then served to his victims. Across the internet people pounced on Cosby, with virtually no one considering that late nights at bars and agreements to go back to one or another’s place is a coy way of agreeing to engage in sexual relations.

That ninety percent of human communication is done non-verbally was forgotten by the lynch mob assembled on social media. The accusation of a woman rendered Cosby guilty. Nobody dared to be skeptical, for being skeptical of a woman accusing a man is socially taboo. It seems that many of Harper Lee’s fans never understood the point of To Kill A Mockingbird.

They had nothing but sympathy for a fictional character, but when stepping into the real world, where there could be social ramifications for skeptical behavior and rewards for falling in line with everybody else. They adopted blind virtue in the hopes for praise from their peers, and this they call empathy.

Now had this been nothing but memes and jokes on the internet, it would ultimately mean nothing. There would be no cause for me to write this. Unfortunately the online lynch mob had its effect. Bill Cosby was arraigned, indicted, and charged with rape. Still, he had his Constitutional Right to a fair trial. His trial would be by jury. Twelve fellow citizens selected by both prosecuters and Cosby’s own attorneys.

In theory, these individuals would be totally impartial. The defendant should be a complete stranger to them, and all biases should have been carefully weeded out by the lawyers involved in the jury selection. In practice, each individual would have been affected both by Cosby’s celebrity and the eighteen month campaign of accusations to which he had been subjected. Since his fame had faded since the early nineties, the influence of the media was stronger. Twelve impartial people sat in a jury box and the first real thought through each head was most likely “he is a rapist”.

It came as no surprise that he was found guilty. The self-satisfied celebrated their virtues. They patted themselves on the backs, every one knowing that every time they mocked Cosby online, they helped to convict what might very well be an innocent man. And for this miscarriage of justice, they were proud.

Mandatory Reading Produces Pseudo-Philosophers

Those books which children must read according to their schools are the same ones which will influence them. Teachers, parents, and other adults present these books with an enthusiasm, both real and feigned, which convinces the children of the importance of the book. All to often the selected books are fiction, and children are the quickest to forget that in fictions, writers control the story. So, reality is twisted in their minds when what they sense and what they read are at odds with one another.

There are those who are entrusted with developing young minds who instead take this opportunity to mold them. They discuss not the philosophies of the books but of the events and characters within, often painting these fictitious creations with biases one would never include. For example, Harper Lee’s book becomes not about injustice, but about white privilege. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men becomes not a tale about two men who bet everything on a pipe dream (and certainly not about a capricious woman, not in today’s Feminist theocracy) but about the plight of the handicapped.

A child’s inability to properly interpret fiction, an ideologue masquerading as an educator, and the (generally false) enthusiasm with which people react to books produce a dangerous chimera. They take fantasy for reality, and cognitively distort their brain’s interpretation of the stimuli they see. Slave Morality has become so ingrained in them that they cannot possibly see themselves as anything but victims, and those who have what they want are not meritorious, but thieves. This manner of thinking, ingrained into them by pernicious indoctrinators masquerading as educators, blinds them to the truth. Regardless of what that truth is, they refuse to see it. Instead, they see whatever they know is popular to see. Simply reading these books is praised. A young boy who reads Lord of the Rings is not instantly quizzed on the Tolkien’s mores of self-sacrifice, courage, loyalty, and the other virtues an old soldier would have certainly infused into his epic. Rather, the child is praised for reading such a long book. Children who read To Kill A Mockingbird are celebrated for reading a childhood favorite of the adults in their life. The themes of injustice and innocent until proven guilty are not discussed. Instead, a Slave Moralist simply discusses the racism, conveniently ignoring the lying woman. The child grows into an adult who, instead of considering the philosophy in the writing, or just enjoying the story itself, wants to celebrated for reading it.

In this way, the combination of celebration of the mere act of reading and the guiding of interpretation by indoctrinators masquerading as educators serves as a form of censorship. The intended message is obscured by the opinions of self-righteous and self-congratulatory adults who instill these insidious virtues into children. Is it any wonder that so many fall in line with injustices?